All the Devils' hottest news, from notes to numbers to neutral-zone traps

Friday, April 20, 2012

Much attention was given heading into tonight’s Game 4 to Panthers goaltender Scott Clemmensen’s success against the Devils.

The former Devil is 4-0-0 with a 2.05 goals-against average and a .937 save percentage in five regular season starts against his old team. Clemmensen also stopped all 19 shots he faced in a relief performance in the Panthers’ 4-3 win in Game 3 on Tuesday, which earned the 34-year-old netminder his first NHL playoff start tonight.

Clemmensen allowed only a power-play deflection to Zach Parise on 17 shots in the first two periods, but the Devils got to him in the third period with three goals on 10 shots.

“It didn’t matter who was in net,” said center Travis Zajac, who had a goal and an assist tonight. “For us to be successful, we have to get pucks to the net, get bodies in front and tip plays and other shots on net. We were lucky to get some by him and, hopefully, we can gain some confidence from that.”

Three of the Devils’ four goals, including Parise’s deflection, went high on Clemmensen’s glove side. Steve Bernier and Ilya Kovalchuk both beat Clemmensen over the left shoulder with wrist shots after he dropped down.

“It’s huge for us to get back and even the series up,” said Patrik Elias, who was 13-9 on faceoffs. “Clemmer plays well. He’s very calm in the net. You see it. Sometimes it’s hard to read him, but a couple of great shots by the guys went past him. We know what might work against him, but we’ve got to keep doing that and do everything under control.”

Now, the question for Panthers coach Kevin Dineen is will he stick with Clemmensen for Saturday’s Game 5 or go back to Jose Theodore, who was pulled just 6:16 into Game 3 after giving up three goals on six shots.

***The Devils’ fourth line chipped in again with the goal from Bernier 2:02 into the third period that made it 2-0. Each member of the third line of Ryan Carter, Stephen Gionta and Bernier has scored a goal in the series.

“It’s pride,” Bernier said. “You can call it what you want. We want to win and we feel as a fourth line that we’ve got the speed, we’ve got the size to not get scored on. That’s our main goal. Then, play in their zone and get some offensive zone time.”

Bernier, who will sub for David Clarkson on the third line following power plays, played 14 shifts for 9:55 in ice time and had three shots on goal. Gionta played 13 shifts for 7:07 in ice time and Carter, who plays some on the penalty kill, played 14 shifts for 8:10.

“We try to give quality minutes when we get out there and play in their end and wear their D down with play down low,” Gionta said. “We’ve gotten some bounces the first four games, so, hopefully, they keep coming.”

Devils coach Pete DeBoer said the fourth line has “been outstanding” and again praised Gionta, who spent the entire season in Albany before being called up for the regular season finale against Ottawa – a game in which he scored his first NHL goal. Gionta has filled in nicely for Jacob Josefson, who fractured his left wrist on April 3 against the Islanders, as the center on the fourth line with a goal and an assist in this series.

“He’s been a key addition for us,” DeBoer said. “When Josefson went down, we were just starting to get four lines rolling and really being able to play a four-line game and the question was who was going to fill in there and Gio’s name came up. He hadn’t played center in probably a year, came in and has seamlessly jumped in that spot and given us everything we could ask for, so I can’t say enough about him.”

DeBoer called Bernier, “another one of our unsung guys.”

“He hops over the boards and whether he plays seven minutes or 15, he plays a hard game in the corners, on the walls, finishes his hits, goes to the front of the net,” DeBoer said. “For me he’s a playoff-type player, a big-body guy (6-3, 220) and he wears people out.”

The 5-foot-7, 185-pound Gionta also got involved physically with three hits. One was on 6-3, 209-pound Jerred Smithson in the first period only moments after Smithson had leveled Gionta with a hit in the Devils’ end.

Gionta said he did not know that Smithson was the one to hit him when he hit Smithson.

“I was just trying to play hard,” Gionta said. “I knew there was someone coming up the middle there and that’s part of the game. I saw the replay later.”

Gionta also had a hit on Panthers defenseman Keaton Ellerby that knocked Ellerby out of the game with a lower-body injury in the second period. Gionta hit Ellerby into the boards near the end of the Devils’ bench and the door came open.

“That’s unfortunate he got hurt there with the door opening,” Gionta said. “I was just trying to finish the plays hard.”

***

The Devils finished the game strong tonight with the lead, scoring three times in the third period. Unlike in Game 1 and Game 3 they did not stop playing when they got a 3-0 lead.

“After the way the last game ended, you want to finish a team off properly and I think we did that,” DeBoer said.

“I think we finished the game really well,” Parise said. “We gave up a couple 2-on-1s, so we can’t allow that to happen when you’ve got the lead late in the game, but I thought we did a good job of not sitting back, just playing the same way we had and playing the same way that works. We kept forechecking and we made it tough on them.”

***Things finally got a bit nasty in the third period after the Devils grabbed a four-goal lead. There were 34 penalty minutes in the third period, including 12 for Clarkson, who picked up a 10-minute misconduct with 20.1 seconds left after he had to be separated for Erik Gudbranson.

“You’re down to the end here,” DeBoer said. “The rubber hits the road. It’s two out of three (wins the series). Emotions are high. You have two hard-working teams and I would expect more of the same.”***Much was made of Anton Volchenkov being on the ice for nine of the 10 goals the Devils allowed in the first three games, so we should mentione he was plus-2 tonight, getting him back to even for the series, in 16:19 in ice time, which is the most he has played in this series.

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.